Лоренс Даррелл - Prospero's Cell

Blue embroidered bolero jacket with black and gold braid and piping.

A white soft shirt with puffed sleeves.

Baggy blue breeches called Vrakes.

White woollen gaiters.

And pointed Turkish slippers with no pom-pom.

Either a soft red fez with a blue tassel

Or a white straw hat.

11.6.37

The straw from the packing-cases will go to cover the floor of the magazine where the goat is tethered. The rooms look lovely and gracious with their white-washed walls, and the few bright paintings and books. The windows give directly on to the sea, so that its perpetual sighing is the rhythm of our work and our sleeping. By day it runs golden on the ceilings, reflecting back the bright Feasant rugs — a ship, a gorgon, a loom, a cypress-tree; reflecting back the warm crude pottery of our table; reflecting back N. now brown-skinned and blonde, reading in a chair with her legs tucked under her. Calm eyes, calm hair, and clear white teeth like those of a young carnivore. As Father Nicholas says: 'What more does a man want than an olive-tree, a native island, and woman from his own place?'

13.6.37

The man and his wife are fine creatures. He is called Anastasius and she Helen. It is obvious from their children that the marriage was a marriage of love rather than convenience. She is most delicately formed in a deep silken olive-colour; their hair has that deep black which shines out in sudden hints of blue — the simile of the Klepthic poems says 'hair like the wing of a raven'. Beautifully formed eyebrows above their dark eyes, clear and circumflex. Only their hands and feet — like those of all peasants — are blunt and hideous: mere spades grown upon the members through a long battle with soil, ropes, and wood. Their daughters are called Sky and Freedom.

17.6.37

'Formal geology', writes Theodore in his treatise, 'will still find features of interest in Corcyra; and if the form of the island in general is conditioned by its limestone features, there are many interesting configurations worth the mature attention of fieldworkers.'

Southward the land falls gently away to the white cape, luxuriant and steaming; every curve here is a caress, a nakedness to the delighted eyes, an endearment. Every prospect is contained in a frame of cypress and olives and brilliant roofs. Inlets, lakes, islands lead one slowly down to the deserted salt-pans beyond Lefkimi.

Two great ribs of mountain enclose this Eden. One runs from north to south along the western ranges; while from cast to west the dead lands rise sheer to Pantocrator. It is in the shadow of this mountain that we live. Here little vegetation clings to the rock; water, harsh with the taste of iron and ice cold, runs from the ravines; the olive-trees are stunted and contorted in an effort to maintain a purchase on this crumbling gypsum territory. Their roots, like the muscles of wrestlers, hang from the culverts. Here the peasant girls lounge on the hillside — flash of colour like a bird — with a flower between their teeth, while their goats munch the tough thistle and ilex.

'All epochs from the Jurassic are represented here. In the north the configurations of certain caves suggest volcanic origins, but this has not yet been proved.' The grottoes at Paleocastrizza are ribbed with jewels which smoulder purple and yellow and nacre in the reflected light of the intruding sea. Grapes from this mountain region yield a wine that bubbles ever so slightly; an undertone of sulphur and rock. Ask for red wine at Lakones and they will bring you a glass of volcano's blood.

20.6.37

Zarian sends me a poem about the island in Armenian to which he adds an English translation. Writing of Corcyra he says: 'The gold and moving blue have stained our thoughts so that the darkness is opaque, and we see in our dreams the world as if in some great Aquarium. Exiles and sharers, we have found a new love. This is Corcyra, the chimney-corner of the world.'

Since I have nothing else I reciprocate with my poem on Manoli, the landscape painter of Greece: 'After a lifetime of writing acrostics he took up a brush and everything became twice as attentive. Trees had been simply trees before. Distinctions had been in ideas. Now the old man went mad, for everything undressed and ran laughing into his arms.'

Theodore promises 'Maps, Tables, and Statistics'. I am making no attempt to control all this material. If I wrote a book about Corcyra it would not be a history but a poem.

World of black cherries, sails, dust, arbutus, fishes and letters from home.

24.6.37

Fragment from a novel about Corcyra which I began and destroyed: 'She comes down through the cloud of almond-trees like a sentence of death, all dressed in white and leading her flock to the very gates of the underworld. Our hearts melt in us at the candour of her smile and the beauty of her walk. Soon she is to marry Niko, the fat moneylender, and become a stout shrew drudging out to olive-pickings on a lame donkey, smelling of garlic and animal droppings.'

25.6.37

N. has been away for three days in the town, trying to buy a few odds and ends of furnishings for the house. The silence here is like a discernible pulse — the heart-beat of time itself. I am all day alone on the great rock; the sea is cold — its chill hurts the back of the throat like an iced wine; but blue as the grave, while the sun is blazing. To-night a letter by boat from her. 'I have bought us a twenty-foot cutter, carve built, and Bermuda rigged. I am terribly excited — the whole world seems to be open before us. But O how wine-darkly she rides. Bringing her out to-morrow with Petros. Wait for me at the point.'

26.6.37

The problem of water for the garden is serious. The only spring is on the highroad a quarter of a mile up the ravine. All our water is carried down on the backs of womenfolk in huge earthen jars. We had Nick the douser down with his hazel-twig, but after walking backwards and forwards grumbling under his breath for a quarter of an hour, he pronounced the water 'too deep'—over five metres. As the house stands at sea-level we could not afford to dig and have the well turn brackish on us. It must be a mountain spring or nothing. Meanwhile my two erudites send their suggestions by water — each a model of its kind. Zarian suggests a machine that a friend of his invented for turning salt water into fresh; he forgets how it works but he will write to America at once for particulars. It costs rather a lot but would save trouble; we would simply put one end of the pump in the sea and spray the garden with fresh water. Theodore, on the other hand, suggests something more practical. In the droughty summer the natives of Macedonia construct themselves ice-boxes by pulping quantities of prickly pear which they bury in a hole to the depth of about two metres. The hole is filled with fine pebbles or stones, and when the rains come the absorbing pulp of the prickly pear sups up the water and retains it in its pores. He suggests that we should adopt this scheme for our walled garden-boxes. 'Be careful', he adds, 'to pulp the tree well. Count V. tried this in his country house garden on my advice but omitted to pulp the prickly pear so that by some unfortunate chance he found it growing up through his flower-beds. This, as you can imagine, was a catastrophe and he has not spoken to me since.'

3.7.37

The conventions of our weekly meeting at 'The Partridge' are charming; we share our food, our criticism, and even our mail. When Zarian gets a letter from Unamuno or Celine it is read out and passed round the table; and when I get one of Henry Miller's rambling exuberant letters from Paris the company is delighted. This is the real island flavour; our existence here is in this delectable landscape, remote from the responsibilities of an active life in Europe, have given us this sense of detachment from the real world. Over the smoking copper pans the face of Paul, the Cretan manager of the tavern, looms strangely. He watches over the dishes, pausing to wipe the sweat out of his great brown moustaches; his manner is that of one who has dealt with epicures for a lifetime. Later Luke, the blind guitarist, arrives, led by his small son — a child of great beauty and pallor. Its face is the face of a Byzantine ikon. Stiffly the old red-faced man sits down on a chair, and strikes his instrument; the small expressionless face of the boy is cocked over his cheap violin as he tunes it. Then they strike up one of the familiar Greek jazz songs — inevitably a tango; yet the words haunt, and the refrain is taken up to the accompaniment of knife and fork by the roystering Zarian, Peltours the lean Russian painter, Veronica and John, Nimiec, Theodore. The narrow white-washed room with its ugly tables and cheap advertisements rings.